Autumn | Page 8

more . . .
more than her mother had had. "If I wait," she said in a low voice,
"to . . . see a bit of life . . . what's the harm?"
The pod in Mrs. Barly's hand cracked with a pop, and trembled in the
air, split open like the covers of a book. "I declare," she exclaimed, "I
don't know what to think . . . well . . . wait . . . I suppose you want to be
like Mrs. Wicket?"
"No, I don't," said Anna.
"Yes," said Mrs. Barly, in a shaking voice, "yes . . . wait . . . you'll see a
bit of something . . . a taste of the broom, perhaps. . . ."
While the two women looked after the house, the hired men worked in
the fields, under the hot sun, their wet, cotton shirts open at the neck,
their faces shaded with wide straw hats. Farmer Barly leaned against
one side of a tumbled-down wooden fence, and old Mr. Crabbe against
the other.
"This year," said Farmer Barly, "I'm going to put up a silo in my barn.
And instead of straw to cover it, I'm going to plant oats on top."
"Go along," said Mr. Crabbe.
"Well, it's a fact," said Mr. Barly. "I'm building now, back of the cows."

"Digging, you might say," corrected Mr. Crabbe.
"Building, by God," said Mr. Barly.
Mr. Crabbe tilted back his head and cast a look of wonder at the sky.
"A hole is a hole," he said finally.
"So it is," agreed Mr. Barly, "so it is. It takes a Republican to find that
out." And, greatly amused at his own wit, Mr. Barly, who was a
Democrat, slapped his knee and burst out laughing.
"Yes, sir," said Mr. Crabbe solemnly, with pious joy, "I'm a
Republican . . . a good Republican, Mr. Barly, like my father before
me." He smote his fist into his open palm. "I'll vote the Democrats blue
in the face. If a man can't vote for his own advantage, what's the ballot
for? I say let's mind our own business. And let me get my hands on
what I want."
"Get what you can," said Mr. Barly.
"And the devil take the hindmost."
"It's all the same to me," quoth Mr. Barly, "folks being mostly alike as
two peas."
Mr. Crabbe spat into the stubble. "The way I look at it," he said, "it's
like this: first, there's me; and then there's you. That's the way I look at
it, Mr. B."
And he went home to repeat to his wife what he had said to Farmer
Barly. "I gave it to him," he declared.
In another field, Abner and John Henry, who had been to war, also
discussed politics. They agreed that the pay they received for their
work was inadequate. It seemed to them to be the fault of the
government, which was run for the benefit of others besides
themselves.
That afternoon, Mr. Jeminy, with Boethius under his arm, came into

Frye's General Store, to buy a box of matches for Mrs. Grumble. As he
paid for them, he said to Thomas Frye, who had been his pupil in
school: "These little sticks of wood need only a good scratch to confuse
me, for a moment, with the God of Genesis. But they also encourage
Mrs. Grumble to burn, before I come down in the morning, the bits of
paper on which I like to scribble my notes."
At that moment, old Mrs. Ploughman entered the store to buy a paper
of pins. "Well," she cried, "don't keep me waiting all day." But when
Mr. Jeminy was gone, she said to Thomas Frye, "I guess I don't want
any pins. What was it I wanted?"
Presently she went home again, without having bought anything. "It's
all the fault of that old man," she said to herself; "he mixes a body up
so."
On his way home Mr. Jeminy passed, at the edge of the village, the
little cottage where the widow Wicket lived with her daughter. Seeing
Mrs. Wicket in the garden, he stopped to wave his hand. Under her
bonnet, the young woman looked up at him, her plain, thin face flushed
with her efforts in the garden patch. "I've never seen such weeds," she
cried. "You'd think . . . I don't know what you'd think. They grow and
grow . . ."
Mr. Jeminy went up the hill toward his house, carrying the box of
matches. As he walked, the little white butterflies, which danced above
the road, kept him company; and all about him, in the meadows, among
the daisies, the beetles, wasps, bees, and crickets, with fifes, flutes,
drums, and triangles, were singing joyously